When kids refuse to swim

To be sure, I suffer Mom Guilt on a daily basis. There are not enough green, leafy vegetables in my son’s diet. I inevitably miss a spot on his face applying sunscreen. I do not play Legos nearly enough.

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Is it time to learn to swim?

But one big bag of guilt hangs over my head: Our son cannot swim yet.

Zack is nearly 8. He floats happily in his grandpa’s swimming pool with arm floaties on and every now and again tries to swim in the shallow end, gingerly placing his face in the water despite a severe dislike of water in his eyes.

We should have started swim lessons when he was a toddler. We didn’t. When he was about 4, we signed him up for two lessons a week for a month. He refused to even go in the water. After two weeks trying to make 6:30 p.m. lessons and watching him sit at the side of the pool, we stopped going, promising ourselves we’d try again later.

He never wanted to go to swim lessons and we didn’t push it. This is a kid who will take off into the trees on skis to find jumps, but put his head underwater? Nope. Granted, I was afraid to swim until I was about 10. Before that, I wore a life jacket at our friend’s pool and hung onto the shallow end even with the vest. I actually knew how to swim, but feared I would forget at any moment.

We did put Zack in private swim lessons last year and he made some progress, but wow was that time-consuming and costly. At that pace of learning, we were looking at months and hundreds of dollars.

Here we are at another summer where Zack troops off to day camp, with every Friday the bus bound for Lake Anza and me worrying about him because he can’t swim. (Sure, they don’t let the kids go deeper than their chests, but they are allowed to go underwater … not that he would, but what if he trips? Worry and guilt go hand in hand, right?)

So, I’m looking for advice. Any tricks to help a kid make that leap of faith and skill to start swimming? Best places to take swim lessons?